Borders and boundaries divide, unite American West

"Of course that's where North Dakota is," one almost hears, or "Where else would we put Nevada?" or perhaps even "Because God intended that to be Wyoming and that to be Colorado."

While even historians seem to treat state borders as if they "had always existed, awaiting their discovery by intrepid pioneers," in reality the borders were human inventions, wrote Derek E. Everett in his new book, "Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands."

"By drawing lines in the trans-Mississippi West throughout the nineteenth century, Americans imposed a specific form of political organization inherited from the older states of the Union," he wrote. "State boundaries both divide and unite."

Americans interact with countless borders that shaped their lives, dictating school options, law enforcement, taxes, identity and more. Western borders are particularly unique in their artificiality, with little apparent consideration of natural border-making features such as rivers and mountains.

Eastern mentalities came with the pioneers, who used a "divide-and-conquer system" to divide up the land and authority over it, Everett wrote.

In 1883, U.S. Rep. Jame B. Belford of Colorado stated that "while the East is manufacturing boots and shoes and baskets, the people of the West have widened the pathway of the pioneer into the highway of empire and are manufacturing States and commonwealths."

The British used a mix of factors when considering the boundaries of the colonies, and when it came to shaping the new states, mountains and rivers came under consideration as natural boundaries.

"Of all the questions raised during boundary-making debates in the nineteenth century, few appeared more often or with more vigor than the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines, ones corresponding to parallels and meridians or ones fashioned by natural features such as rivers and mountains," he wrote.

Straight lines, with no recognition of geography, population or history, largely prevailed and made for cleaner maps of the "wonderfully variegated land into a simple set of political boxes." Straight lines also reflected Eastern lawmakers lack of familiarity with Western lands.

Rivers move, and mountains are tough to survey, witness that "surveyors marked the only western boundary that follows either a mountain range or a watershed divide — most of the line between Idaho and Montana — only after completing their work along every other western state line."

State borders also made border towns.

"State boundaries have both facilitated and complicated the enforcement of law and order ever since their creation," Everett wrote.

Montana, he wrote, failed "inexplicably" to define state boundaries in the 1972 constitution. An attempt 40 years later by a Republican activist to include the physical definition of the space and close what she considered a legal loop hole that jeopardized state sovereignty failed.

"Montana thus remains a limitless state, perhaps an inspiration for its temporary establishment of daytime speed limits in the late 1990s," Everett wrote.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at 791-1490 or by email at kinbody@greatfallstribune.com.